What this book is about

Social capital, in the form of social networks and trust, is generally known as resources generated from social interactions. How we understand the nature of social relationships in people's everyday lives is, then, crucial for us in analysing the process of how social capital is formed, evolved, remade, and dissolved.

The mainstream social capital approach, led by Robert Putnam and Michael Woolcock, regards social capital as the ‘missing link’ in poverty alleviation and as the ‘essential glue’ in binding people together. Dense social networks and high levels of trust among community members are claimed to have spill-over effects which facilitate social co-operation (Woolcock 2000; Putnam 2000). Against this background, there has been a strong call for investing in social capital and getting social relations right to the top of the social policy agenda, in both developing and developed countries.

This understanding of social capital is underpinned by neo-institutional thinking. It considers social capital building as a social re-engineering exercise, aiming at (re-) building contractual, co-operative relationships by incentive restructuring, institutional crafting and authority redefining. This development perspective, wittingly and unwittingly, fits into the ‘pro-growth’ agenda (Fine 2001).

The effectiveness of this approach to social capital building, this book will argue, is constrained by its two implicit assumptions: firstly, social capital is necessarily good for poor people, and secondly, poor people are willing and able to use social capital in exchange for other forms of resources. These assumptions reflect an inadequate understanding of the nature of social relationships in people's associational lives (Cleaver 2005a).

Increasingly, research is warning us that social capital is not equally available to all, and the outcomes of the processes are not always beneficial to poor people (Edwards et al. 2006). Studies show that poor people are often constrained by inequitable institutional arrangements, intermittent support from social organisations, and a lack of financial and human capital and unfavourable physical environment (Cleaver and Frank 2006). Worse still, the processes can undermine poor people's already limited social capital. Helping the poor to secure social capital can, unwittingly, lead to reinforcing power inequalities. (Wong 2007).